Depends wholly on the strength of the display at the time but yes colour can be seen with the naked eye.  Certainly on the occasions that I have viewed from Fife and Morayshire I've always found that detecting movement in the aurora is harder than colour; green in particular is prominent. 

Jim 

@alecras2345 , Ash did you ever get your own setup installed? 

Jim 

I generally concentrate on the moon and solar during the next few months. Something rather enjoyable observing during the daytime and without freezing to death  

Jim 

5 hours ago, EdwinHubble2023 said:

Dear Astronomy Community:

Can anyone use the material from a Mylar space blanket as a neutral density filter for solar observing?

Also, can anyone spin a container of, say, an epoxy resin, so that a parabolic surface in form congeals to form a mirror blank?  Perhaps this idea might yield mirror blanks that are lighter than conventional glass mirror 

blanks and have a smaller coefficient of expansion than conventional glass mirror blanks.  Thank you.

 

 

                                                                                                                                                                                                   Best regards,

                                                                                                                                                                                                   Carl Mesaros    

No 

and 

No

Jim 

18 minutes ago, Elp said:

Note, planetary (solar system objects) and deep sky processing is different. The final steps share some similarities, the early stages are different, unless you choose to edit singular images only (no stacking).

They are indeed, but I thought it may be an easier in to the art of processing and a quick win. Just a suggestion. 

Jim  

Hi Ash, I don't have any experience with itelescope but I saw that they have a tutorial support. I know you will be keen to get involved with acquiring the data, using a telescope, but if you want to try your hand at processing you could try some of the data FLO provides to us from the IKI observatory (see link below).  I reckon processing is the hardest part of astrophotography, I just don't have a head for it I guess.  I wonder then if before you shoot off trying deep sky objects, maybe using Registax (another free program) to process a simple video capture of the moon may give you some enjoyment and would be a better introduction.  Registax will allow you to stack the individual video frames and then adjust parameters to draw out detail. All you need to start is a simple and short video capture of the moon - might be worth thinking about.

Here's the link to the IKI data on the forum. If you want to process any of this data you would need some of the software as has been suggested by others above; GIMP or Siril. One of the most basic steps you could do is to take the luminance file and perform a stretch on it, this will disclose the galaxy or nebula for you to see it. Beyond that, processing is a steep learning curve and I am now out of my depth so can't help any further, but there are lots of talented folk here who will be better placed to help.  The only other thing I would add is really try the free software first before you commit money to signing up to anything, this can get expensive quick. 

https://stargazerslounge.com/forum/294-iki-observatory/

https://www.gimp.org/

https://pixinsight.com/            they offer a trial period this would allow you to play with some data from IKI 

https://siril.org/                       I have no experience of this 

https://www.astronomie.be/registax/               for processing your lunar and planetary video data

Jim 

1 hour ago, Philip R said:

I think you’re going to need a bigger or better mount. That one only does azimuth! 😜

I have a plan for a wedge  

Jim 

30 minutes ago, ollypenrice said:

14 inch RASA. For the imager, it can do everything, widefield and high res., and do them at lightning speed.

Olly

That consoles me a little because it is well outside my price range; I've been trying over the past few months to get hold of a RASA 8 but I gave up in frustration.🥲 I've been following your comments Olly on the RASAs and I think they may be suited to the ever shortening weather windows that blight us now. Anyway, in the spirit of "love the one you're with" I'll nominate my recently acquired Esprit 120ED which replaces my trusty Equinox 80 ED.  It's yet to see first light, still sitting on my desk being fettled. When I built the observatory I placed the pier a little too forward from centre.  The 120 however is just a little too close to the door frame for comfort so I'm just about to start relocating the pier!  I'm at last operating it all remotely so I no longer need space for a desk. You get a telescope and the work never ends   

Jim 

I thought it was Mr Takahashi's first light before he discovered the secret art of telescope making  

Jim 

30 minutes ago, Nigella Bryant said:

Hi Jim, I had outsourced the 3D print to a company in Cornwall,  £15. I don't have a 3D printer.  

Looks really well printed Nigela. so money well spent. I use an Ender 5 at moment but I'm looking to upgrade to give a wider material ability. 

Jim 

Looks like a very neat print Nigella; what printer do you use?

Jim 

Lovely art work. Certainly doesn't look like a planet one would want to visit. 

Jim 

9 minutes ago, hp3dp said:

This stuff is rough at first until you get a few rotations and then the rough texture smooths out and you get a very nice smooth movement on everything. I've tried taking a file to the nylon parts and after a few swipes it just glides across without removing any more material and the parts look shiny.

Good news is the parts use so little material that they're pretty inexpensive to print so swapping them out if they wear out won't hurt the wallet much.

I must admit when I first saw the main ring I thought it was metal, it really does have a sheen to it. Like you say if wear does become to much they can easily be reprinted.  I'm looking at upgrading my current 3D printer later in the next few months so that I can print with a wider range of materials. At the moment I'm restricted to PLA. 

Jim 

19 minutes ago, hp3dp said:

The gear is printed in black silk PLA for this first test and the worm is printed with powdered nylon 11 on a Formlabs Fuse 1. PLA is really cheap and prints MUCH faster than the Nylon 11 so its perfect for prototyping.
Once I have the design finalized, my plan is to print the gear out of the same Nylon 11 as the worm. At least as a sleeve that will go around a carbon fiber nylon filament printed hub.

The goal of this was to keep costs low but also make it efficient on power which is why I didn't go with a nema17. This little motor only needs 0.8A and also keeps the weight down in case I decide to travel with it.

I think so far I have about $75 into it including motor, bearings and hardware. Motor was the most expensive part at about $55 but they can be found about half the price from China

Here is another picture showing all of the components:

How well do you think printed Nylon will resist wear? I've never used anything more exotic than PLA in my own prints.  I suppose at the end of day you just need to set wear limits and then swap out worn worm and main ring - almost treating them as consumable. It's a lovely neat design, very compact. Can't wait to see you report on it once running. 

Jim 

Nicely executed hp3dp; what filament material did you use?  Oh and welcome to SGL it really is a fantastic place to be and share ideas. 

Jim 

This comes to mind, by Roosevelt, 

Jim

“It is not the critic who counts; not the man who points out how the strong man stumbles, or where the doer of deeds could have done them better. The credit belongs to the man who is actually in the arena, whose face is marred by dust and sweat and blood; who strives valiantly; who errs, who comes short again and again, because there is no effort without error and shortcoming; but who does actually strive to do the deeds; who knows great enthusiasms, the great devotions; who spends himself in a worthy cause; who at the best knows in the end the triumph of high achievement, and who at the worst, if he fails, at least fails while daring greatly, so that his place shall never be with those cold and timid souls who neither know victory nor defeat.”

New take on driving to a dark site with a portable rig!

Jim 

1 hour ago, Astronomist said:

As I understood from the commentary the starship was supposed to separate some time prior to the start of the  tumbling, but failed to do so. presumably the staging mechanism had a problem or something.

It could suggest that there was the possibility of more than one failure. Examination of wreckage would be useful here. 

Jim 

1 hour ago, SamAndrew said:

I'd disagree and say you can work out how something failed if you have the right telemetry, and while recovery and analysis of the debris would certainly be of value, it's not worth the effort for the reasons you state. 

The approach here is to iterate quickly, and fail fast; the rocket was obsolete before it took of, so they could go to a whole load of effort, only to find the failure is in a part that has already been redesigned or replaced.

Then we will certainly disagree.

There is no doubt on what SpaceX design philosophy is, see my previous comment

Jim 

40 minutes ago, Ags said:

I was impressed that stayed together through it's fairly intense spiralling. I've seen other rockets disintegrate from a slight deviation. Starship seems incredibly strong despite its huge bulk.

Yes that was pretty notable and should support their growing confidence of the structural integrity of Starship - that will certainly be catalogued as a success.

Jim 

3 hours ago, SamAndrew said:

https://www.faa.gov/media/27236

There is an environmental assessment, spacex were only planning to recover or sink debris that did not sink naturally, they were even planning to resort to firearms in the event the booster didn't sink.

Spending millions surveying and recovering debris from the sea floor at this stage in development is not their philosophy.

https://spaceflightnow.com/2015/07/20/support-strut-probable-cause-of-falcon-9-failure/#:~:text=A faulty support strut inside,chief Elon Musk said Monday.

See the above story for how they figured out the failure in a Falcon 9 using telemetry to work out what had failed, and then ground testing on the same parts to confirm the parts weren't made to tollerance.

"Musk said SpaceX engineers analyzing extensive telemetry data from the rocket, along with physical testing on the ground, concluded a support strut holding one of the helium tanks likely fractured near a bolt attach point."

For sure acoustic vibration analysis is used throughout aviation to predict failure modes of rotating components such as turbine, compressor discs and blades, gearboxes etc.  The point you are missing is that without physically examining the component that failed due to say a stress failure, there is no way of knowing the failure mode.  Strain gauges could be used to provide telemetered data and these may be in use in a number of critical components.  If they are making no attempt to recover any of the wreckage for examination then they are doing so because of financial. practical or engineering reasons- they may well be confident that they have sufficient data through telemetry but it will not give the complete picture.  Case in point concerns the quote regarding the support strut - it is suspected of failure but the mode of failure will remain unknown.  They will certainly perform load testing and material examination of other similarly specified struts. 

Jim 

I guess what we are seeing in the reaction to this so called "fail" is a different mindset between those in the engineering profession and those who are not. 

Jim 

2 hours ago, SamAndrew said:

There's no intention to recover any of the wreckage.

How do you know that? Again telemetry cannot inform anything on the failure mode of martial properties or the nature of stress failures.  As before I'll defer to the engineers employed by Space X doing their work. 

Jim 

24 minutes ago, Stuart1971 said:

Why, starlink is a completely different project to this latest epic fail, i said that starlink was at least giving people access to things they would not have otherwise, and that this latest attempt was a complete waste of money, where is the contradiction….??

Be careful of you may fall for the lazy media headlines which conflate rocket blows up with fail.  Let's be honest, the complexity of engineering involved in such machines as being developed by the SpaceX programme is beyond the comprehension of the majority of the public. Unless you have a background as a professional engineer in the aerospace industry you will have little understanding of the difficulties to be overcome nor how trial programme development milestones are measured.  I have no inside knowledge but the rocket yesterday certainly comprised tens of thousands of individual components,  multiple systems and miles of computer code.    The rocket was a bespoke design, it wasn't produced on a mass production line, it hasn't undergone extensive field trials and early failure proving; its operating procedures will have been written with nothing other than the benefit of  an engineer's best professional judgement. not informed by an extensive service /flight history. 

The launch event certainly had a goal;  in fact it would have had several goals, all with detailed metrics against which telemetry data would provide indication of performance.  These metrics would have been set against every mission and flight critical component and system; performance criteria defined as  success or fail against declared values would have started in the hours preceding engine ignition and lift off.  Thousands of  measurements of success or fail would have been made right up until the rocket received the command to detonate - that command action itself being a metric which was tested and as we know was successful. 

So when the media talk about "a fail" exactly which of the many program lines of development and metrics are they referring to?  Perhaps these are the self same critics that would have labelled the development of the Covid vaccination development a fail against each of the stages that eventually brought us the vaccine.   J F Kenedy said "we do these things because they are hard"  - I suspect he must have known something about engineering, only those who do not would glibly report  yesterday's launch as a failure.  

Jim 

1 hour ago, SamAndrew said:

Curious what you consider to be the damage done? Bringing internet to the whole world at the expense of a few trails in some astro photos (that can be stacked out) is something I can live with.

Starlink has not brought the internet to the whole world, nor will it! The damage I'm referring to is further congestion of the low Earth orbit, I made no reference to astro photos  

Jim